


cigarette love

by arghmuffin



Series: Zutara February Flash Fics [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ba Sing Se, Cigarettes, F/M, Light Angst, Meet-Cute, Smoking, Some Fluff, Written in reverse, antxrcticas' Zutara Prompts February 2021, backwards go brrr, but make it a little more angsty, but modern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29571192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arghmuffin/pseuds/arghmuffin
Summary: It starts with a white lighter and a bad ending. He should’ve known, really. / A love story told in three parts: the end, the middle, and the beginning.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Zutara February Flash Fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2148075
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26
Collections: Zutara February Flash Fics





	cigarette love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antarcticas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antarcticas/gifts), [kynikos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kynikos/gifts).



> day 18: cigarette, for my discord parents. or, individually, mother dee and father jesuq. thanks for attempting to get me to sleep on time ig :) ily guys sm
> 
> basically i saw a tiktok (heh) with someone who this had happened to, so i wanted to write a fic about it. also this fic is written in reverse because i love non-traditional narrative styles.
> 
> sorry i missed a few prompts, i’ve been super busy (read: procrastinating) lately. enjoy!

**3 // the end**

Zuko is falling. He does not, however, believe it is in love. 

It’s three in the morning and they're stumbling over sidewalk cracks, heads hazy with lakewater and leftover smoke. The area is almost empty now, but of course, it’s Ba Sing Se, so there are still a few people around.

Her fingers are loosely intertwined with his, their knuckles bumping together as they walk. He almost wonders if she’d drugged him earlier because he can’t think straight, just the feeling of her, the wind in his hair. Hurt softens under the glow of street lamps. This— they could really be something beautiful, he thinks absently. Her fingers tighten around his. Everything but her presence seems like a dizzying fever dream.

Suddenly, she stops abruptly, whirling him around to face her. Her eyes shine dangerously under the light, sharp, like something that would bring him to certain death.

“Can I kiss you?”

He barely has time to nod before her lips come crashing into his, tasting like smoke and addiction. And it almost feels unreal, his fingers gripping her hair, the street cobbles clumsy beneath their feet. They break apart and she grins, face flushed, before letting go of him.

“Meet me here tomorrow,” she whispers, then turns on her heel, disappearing into the night. He watches her go in disbelief, heart hammering in a staccato against his ribs. 

She really can’t be real. His head spins the whole way home. Thoughts of white lighters and cigarettes plague his dreams, everything on fire, everything burning.

/

The next evening, the moon grins and he walks across the street to the lake. There’s no sign of her yet, so he waits anxiously, pacing around the perimeter and feeding the nearby turtleducks. 

Hours pass. He stays the entire time, leaving only when the sun breaks past the horizon.

The second day he walks around the entire border three times. She’s still not there, but he finds himself staring at the sidewalk as if she might appear if he looks hard enough. The sky lightens and he walks back to his apartment slowly, body heavy with fatigue.

The third day he lays on the bench and watches the sky.

Nights pass. And he can't stop thinking about her, can't stop checking the park, can't stop fiddling with cigarettes and not smoking them. His head bangs into the bench's headrest. He's falling in love. It’s not a recent development. And no one comes; she doesn't come. 

(He's been falling, or nosediving, really, since the goddamn beginning, and he only realizes it when she doesn’t show for a fifth time.)

Sunlight prickles his skin; he, the lovesick sinner held together by moonbeams, stands up silently and leaves.

**2 // the middle**

“Do you think it’s easy to fall in love?” She inhales deeply, then lets out her breath, a cloud of wispy grey drifting from her mouth. He sighs. 

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. A warm breeze sends the smoke his way. It’s cooler outside in the nighttime, but still hot enough for him to tug at his collar lightly before accepting the cigarette in Katara’s outstretched hand. 

He doesn't think he's ever fallen in love like that. Tripped over infatuation, maybe. He doesn't think he ever will. “I guess it depends.”

She nods, humming. “I think it could happen. Maybe,” she says, smiling at him, and he doesn’t know how to respond without sounding like the air from his lungs has been stolen, so he turns away and _breathes._ Smoke fills the empty space behind his ribs, and he feels somewhat pieced together again. It tends to have that effect on him.

A moment passes, two, three, before she quickly snatches the cigarette back. “You’ve been hogging that long enough,” she tells him teasingly, slotting it neatly between her fingers, almost an extension of her hand.

Surprisingly, he laughs. He hasn’t been doing a lot of that lately. “Ten, shitty seconds, Katara.”

“I’m impressed. I didn’t think you could count that high.”

“Yes, well, I can,” he responds, then pauses. “Although fifteen is another problem.”

Her quiet laughter is enough to make his stomach flutter lightly. People passing on the sidewalk, an abnormal amount for the time of night, glance at them in curiosity. The smell of smoke and her perfume tingles his fingertips pleasantly, subtly.

“Fifteen is rather hard. I don’t blame you,” she says, teeth sharp in her grin. It’s startling on her soft face; she doesn’t look especially like someone sharp, not really. Her mannerisms are embedded so deep in his brain he thinks he can see her smile when he closes his eyes.

Zuko feels like he’s known this girl forever. Maybe even longer, when she asks about his family and the words tumble easily from his lips, tripping over themselves in a clumsy pattern. When she rests her cloudy head on his shoulder, laughing into the crook of his neck, and it just feels _right._

They stand up after a while and walk around the lake, still trading the cigarette that quickly gets replaced by another. An hour passes by, then two, but he can’t bring himself to care, limbs weighed with fatigue and head dizzy with euphoria.

He might have a nicotine addiction. Katara smiles at him, cigarette stuck between her teeth. He doesn’t mind.

**1 // the beginning**

Summertime in Ba Sing Se is sticky; the warmth searches relentlessly for him, grasping at his skin with slippery, sweat-slicked fingers. At least the Fire Nation had dry heat, he thinks, glancing up at the dark sky. It’s midnight and he’s on the sidewalk next to Lake Laogai, headed toward one of the empty benches, heavy in his slow footsteps.

People loiter at the edge of the lake, feeding the turtleducks, taking walks with their families. They’re happy, he can tell, smiles present on their faces, gripping late night snacks with delight. The faint smell of lake water and fire lilies drift under his nose, almost nostalgic in a way. And this is how they meet, their tired lungs aching, the night quietly alive.

A girl sits on the bench next to his, her curly hair frizzy in the humidity, posture relaxed as she leans her head back. She’s beautiful in a quiet, or graceful way, the same way of something too perfect for someone like him to touch.

Alone on his own bench, he keeps looking towards the lake, eyes unfocused. A child with a pet lemur wrapped around their head runs past. Notoriously loud Dai Li sirens go off faintly, in a distance too great for him to fathom. For a moment, the earth stays still on its axis. 

It’s so loud, all the time. The silence is consuming. 

He barely hears when she approaches, but she’s there, standing in front of him with a pack and a white lighter. He remembers what he thought earlier, about her being too delicate to ever touch, and thinks, _oh._

“Do you want to share one?” she asks him casually, like they aren’t strangers, like they weren’t sitting in awkward silence just a moment ago.

Baffled, he blinks in indecision; a second comes and goes. The sirens stop. The world starts spinning again.

“Sure,” he answers, voice strangely hoarse. “Why not.”

She sits down beside him, their fingers brushing as she hands over the newly lit cigarette. He can’t control the slight blush that spreads across his cheeks.

(Zuko is falling. He does not, however, believe that it is in love.) 

**Author's Note:**

> don’t smoke kids
> 
> btw if you didn’t know, white lighters symbolize bad luck. thanks for reading and interacting!


End file.
